Current models of attention propose that we can tune attention in a top-down controlled manner to a specific feature value (e.g., shape, color) to find specific items (e.g., a red car; feature-specific search). However, subsequent research has shown that attention is often tuned in a context-dependent manner to the relative features that distinguish a sought-after target from other surrounding nontarget items (e.g., larger, bluer, and faster; relational search). Currently, it is unknown whether search will be feature-specific or relational in search for multiple targets with different attributes. In the present study, observers had to search for 2 targets that differed either across 2 stimulus dimensions (color, motion; Experiment 1) or within the same stimulus dimension (color; Experiment 2: orange/redder or aqua/bluer). We distinguished between feature-specific and relational search by measuring eye movements to different types of irrelevant distractors (e.g., relatively matching vs. feature-matching). The results showed that attention was biased to the 2 relative features of the targets, both across different feature dimensions (i.e., motion and color) and within a single dimension (i.e., 2 colors; bluer and redder). The results were not due to automatic intertrial effects (dimension weighting or feature priming), and we found only small effects for valid precueing of the target feature, indicating that relational search for two targets was conducted with relative ease. This is the first demonstration that attention is top-down biased to the relative target features in dual target search, which shows that the relational account generalizes to multiple target search. (PsycInfo Database Record (c) 2020 APA, all rights reserved).

中文翻译：

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双目标搜索：注意调整到相关特征，在特征维度内和跨特征维度。

当前的注意力模型建议我们可以以自上而下的控制方式将注意力调整到特定特征值（例如形状、颜色）以查找特定项目（例如红色汽车；特定于特征的搜索）。然而，随后的研究表明，注意力通常以上下文相关的方式调整到将受欢迎的目标与其他周围非目标项目区分开来的相关特征（例如，更大、更蓝、更快；关系搜索）。目前，在搜索具有不同属性的多个目标时，搜索是特定于特征的还是关系性的尚不清楚。在本研究中，观察者必须搜索 2 个不同的目标，这些目标要么跨 2 个刺激维度（颜色、运动；实验 1），要么在同一刺激维度（颜色；实验 2：橙色/红色或浅绿色/蓝色）内。我们通过测量不同类型的不相关干扰项（例如，相对匹配与特征匹配）的眼球运动来区分特征特定搜索和关系搜索。结果表明，注意力偏向于目标的 2 个相对特征，包括不同特征维度（即运动和颜色）和单一维度（即 2 种颜色；更蓝和更红）。结果不是由于自动间隔效应（维度加权或特征启动），我们发现对目标特征的有效预测只有很小的影响，表明对两个目标的关系搜索相对容易进行。这是第一次证明在双目标搜索中注意力自上而下偏向于相对目标特征，这表明关系帐户推广到多目标搜索。（PsycInfo 数据库记录 (c) 2020 APA，保留所有权利）。